My whole life I can only think of a few production companies I’ve heard others say they like: Studio Ghibli, Pixar, Marvel, and A24. I’d always accepted it without giving much thought to what this implies, until recently—until A24. And when I hear people I know say they like A24, one of the first things that makes me apprehensive is the underlying assumption that what they’re actually talking about is probably The Witch (2015, Robert Eggers), Green Room (2015, Jeremy Saulnier), It Comes at Night (2017, Trey Edward Shults), Hereditary (2018, Ari Aster), The Lighthouse (2019, Eggers), and Midsommar (2019, Aster).
I guess what I’m saying is I’m skeptical about what exactly these people are basing their brand loyalty on. Or that among the many films A24 has released, are people feigning brand recognition just to sound cool?
The trailer that played last in the theater I was in was for A24’s upcoming Lamb (2021, Valdimar Jóhannsson). It’s the stupidest trailer I’ve ever seen. But it might also be sheer genius in the way it calculates what its audience wants from the brand while it’s still hot. In an attempt to come up with a summary of where A24 is at: slow-burn, weird, dark, pagan, rural, Anglo-Saxon, violent, psychological horror.
The Green Knight (2021, David Lowery) is a pseudo arthouse GoT pandering medieval quest legend that feels compromised as if it were like ruined by feedback from test audiences or studio execs or both or something. I’m sure its several instances of fragmented editing and narrative shifts are supposed to be unsettling, and hint at witchcraft or a stylized subjectivity giving a glimpse into the hero’s plight, but is it? Does it ever add up? Is it worth it?
7/31/2021 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA
DCP
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